Ice skinning the gravel in the laurels’ shade,
slush pooling in ruts and a hitch
in my back where the bone has slipped;

how easy it would be to lie down,
let sorrow make a stone of me,
still and sunken beneath the rush of days.

I have begged the world to stop asking me to stay,
but everywhere I look, silt red as persimmons,
trunks tilting at the banks like the columns of some Roman ruin,

and that clenched fist inside me relents,
hauls me up to stumble down the road
where pines break toward mountains

and sunlight scatters itself over the mica
like a thousand grains of hurled rice.
The world makes a spectacle of such ordinary rites,

wields beauty like a knife, piercing cleanly
through the heart of me and I’m a fool for it,
for thinking sorrow would be the thing

to bring me to my knees when
it’s these mountains gone hazy with bare branch,
stone peaks smoking into the ether.